The Supreme Court is likely to attempt soon, probably this week, to sort out one of the most puzzling constitutional disputes over the laws that will govern this year’s election of members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Court that already was working on a maze of complex legal issued over who will be able to vote by absentee ballot this year is about to confront anew the always perplexing issue of how to draw the election districts in which U.S. House candidates will be running.

Both of these puzzles exist, of course, because of efforts by President Trump to manipulate how the elections on November 3 are to be carried out.   Dealing with his maneuvers will intensify in the final eight weeks before voters go to the polls.

A potentially historic new case from Missouri has just reached the Court, with serious implications well beyond that state and beyond this year’s election cycle.  It has the potential to lead the Court to re-think some of its key election law precedents.

Here, in summary, are questions that the Missouri case raises and the Court’s precedents that may be at stake:

• If a state legislature passes a law giving one political party a special advantage in elections for Congress, in a “partisan gerrymander” of election district lines, does the U.S. Constitution protect those maps from challenge by state courts? That could test rulings by the Court three years ago and seven years ago, supporting the power of state courts to put some limits on such gerrymanders.  Will that power now be taken away or strictly limited?  (The Court already has shut lower federal courts out of judging those partisan efforts, leaving only state courts to do so.)
• Does the Constitution bar states from giving their voters a veto power over gerrymandered congressional districts drawn by the legislature? The Court has been allowing states to do that under a ruling 90 years ago.
• Will the Court revive a discredited constitutional theory that state legislatures are not bound to obey their own state’s constitutions when they draw new election district maps? The Court seriously questioned that theory three years ago, although it did caution state courts then not to go too far in overseeing that practice.  It might now have to clarify the cautionary note.
• If a legislature’s new gerrymandered maps for congressional seats have already been used this year in a primary election, can that plan be blocked from use in the general election in November? That raises a host of questions under the U.S. Constitution that the Court has not fully settled.
• With this year’s general election coming in just 56 days from this Tuesday, is it too late for states to make the arrangements if the gerrymandered maps are not used?  Will that result in widespread confusion of the voters, especially about the district where they are to vote and where the candidates they prefer are running?  In a ruling 20 years ago, the Court warned states against creating confusion close to election day.
• Since some voters were not shifted to new districts by new maps, does that discriminate unconstitutionally against voters who were moved to new districts and already cast their primary ballots there and should be allowed to do so again in November? Does that discriminate in violation of the “one person, one vote” equality mandate that the Court put into the Constitution more than 60 years ago?

Missouri state officials last week filed an appeal asking the Supreme Court to block a new ruling by their state’s Supreme Court that will allow the voters in a November referendum to approve or veto the new gerrymandered congressional districts.  The ruling also barred the state from using those new districts in November, imposing instead a map that was drawn in 2022 and used before.

The constitutial drama in Missouri has been developing since last year, when the state legislature drew new congressional district lines for the state’s eight seats in the U.S. House.  The new maps, drawn by the legislature at President Trump’s request, changed the political alignment from six Republican districts and two Democratic districts to a 7-to-1 Republican advantage.  A formerly safe seat for Democrats in Kansas City, held now by Rep.  Emanuel Cleaver, was shifted to Republican control by giving the district a distinctly rural population.

The new maps were used on August 4 in Missouri’s congressional primary and the state planned to use them again in November.  However, a voter advocacy group raised almost 300,000 voter signatures to request a referendum against the new maps.  State officials rejected the referendum, arguing that the state constitution does not permit such a challenge to new maps drawn by the legislature.  The officials also cited a litany of violations of the U.S. Constitution.

The state Supreme Court last week unanimously interpreted the state constitution to allow such a referendum challenge, and brushed aside most of the state officials’ claims about the U.S. Constitution, concluding that officials had not made those claims clearly or actually had forfeited them as the case unfolded.

In taking the dispute on to the Supreme Court, Missouri officials asked for a temporary order immediately blocking the state court ruling and a broader order to delay that ruling while the state files a full appeal.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who handles emergency matters from the judicial region that includes Missouri, told the voter advocacy group to file a response by noon today.  Kavanaugh is expected to share with the other Justices the decision on what to do next.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration and the U.S. Postal Service, in an unusual Sunday filing, asked the Court to allow postal officials to go ahead with a new set or restrictions on who can cast a mail-in ballot in the midterm congressional elections this year.  The Court last month had allowed the Postal Service to prepare a plan for such restrictions, but the actual rules had not been issued or put into effed5 by then.  They have now been issued in final form, and the question now is whether the Justices will give permission to enforce the limitations.